late in areas that do not at first glance appear to trigger interstate commerce,
such as the local manufacture and consumption of a product consistent with
state law.
66 Congress can regulate purely intrastate activity as long as such
activity has a “substantial effect” on interstate commerce when considered
in the aggregate.
67 Commerce authority can thus be used to ban products
from commerce, either through direct legislation or agency rulings or regulations.

Congress can also indirectly ban or limit consumer goods through its tax
and spend powers.
68 The power to set tax levels means Congress can discourage risky behavior, such as smoking,
69 and reward health-promoting
activities, such as physical exercise.
70 Congress can similarly use its spending power to influence state lawmaking so long as its efforts are not unduly
coercive upon states.
71 To encourage states to change the drinking age, for
example, Congress passed a law in 1984 that withheld highway funds from
states that did not raise their legal drinking age from eighteen to twenty-one.
72 The spending measure effectively banned alcohol use among eighteen to twenty-one year-olds even though the impetus was to prevent high-way-related deaths and injuries due to alcohol use. Spending powers further
allow Congress to indirectly regulate or ban products by determining which
federal agencies or research projects to fund. In 2008, for example, Congress provided CPSC with more resources to regulate toys containing

67. Congress is authorized to regulate non-economic local activity if the regulation is “a
necessary part of a more general regulation of interstate commerce.” Gonzales, 545 U.S. at
37 (citing United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 561 (1995)).

71. Nat’l Fed’n of Indep. Bus. v. Sebelius, 132 S. Ct. 2566, 2602 (2012) (“Congress
may use its spending power to create incentives for States to act in accordance with federal
policies. But when ‘pressure turns into compulsion’ . . . the legislation runs contrary to our
system of federalism.”).